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The violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville reflects the dangerous, open-the-floodgates culture that having a Bully-in-Chief in the White House has created in America.
Hundreds of protesters descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017 for a “Unite the Right” rally.
The rally was dispersed by police minutes after its scheduled start at noon, after clashes between rallygoers and counter-protesters, and after a torchlit pre-rally march Friday night descended into violence.
But later that day, as rallygoers began a march and counterprotests continued, a reported Nazi sympathizer drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19.
Self-described “pro-white” activist Jason Kessler organized the rally to protest the planned removal of a statue of confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville.
Kessler is affiliated with the alt-right movement that uses internet trolling tactics to argue against diversity and “identity po…

Samia's ex-husband confessed to strangling her, but her father 'denies' any involvement.

The prosecutor in the murder of a British woman Samia Shahid will seek the death penalty for her father and ex-husband. Samia's father Chaudhry Muhammad Shahid and her first husband Chaudhry Muhammad Shakeel are accused of killing the 28-year-old from Bradford while on a visit to Pakistan.

The pair appeared in court in Jhelum in Pakistan's northern Punjab province on Saturday (17 September), but it was a brief hearing after prosecutor Najful Hussain Shah applied for more time to gather evidence.

He said Samia's mother and sister tricked her into visiting Pakistan in July by saying her father was gravely ill and that the women fled to Britain after her murder, according to AP reports.

Shah added that the Pakistani government is trying to bring them back for questioning.

Speaking to reporters outside the court, he also confirmed he will seek the death penalty for both men.

When Samia died on 27 July, her family declared she died of a heart attack and buried her in eastern Pakistan.

However , when her second husband Syed Mukhtar Kazim suspected it was an "honour killing" following their marriage, he urged Pakistani authorities to investigate and publicly accused Samia's family of being responsible for her death.

A Pakistani police investigation concluded that Samia's father stood guard while Shakeel raped her, before the two men strangled her to death. A post-mortem examination confirmed she died from strangulation.

Police sources in Pakistan claim Shakeel admitted the murder in an interview saying, "I strangled Samia to death using a dupatta [a scarf]."

Both men are yet to enter pleas however, BBC Pakistan correspondent Shaimaa Khalil said Shahid "flatly denied" any involvement in his daughter's death as he entered court on Saturday (17 September).

"For the 1st time since his arrest, Muhammad Shahid responded to media questions about her death," Khalil said, according to the BBC. "He said, 'It was all lies' and that he loved his daughter very much."

Source: ibtimes.co.uk, September 17, 2016

UK woman's murder case delayed in Pakistan

A Pakistani court has adjourned the case of a British-Pakistani woman's murder until September 23 to give police more time to submit charges against her father and ex-husband, who are accused of slaying her in the name of honour, police and lawyers say.

Police brought both men before the court in Jhelum as they covered their faces and did not respond to questions from journalists.

After the brief hearing on Saturday, Najful Hussain Shah, the lawyer for the deceased woman's husband, told reporters that he will seek the death penalty for 28-year-old Samia Shahid's father, Mohammed Shahid, and ex-husband, Mohammed Shakeel.

He said Shahid's mother and sister tricked her into visiting Pakistan in July by saying her father was gravely ill and that the women fled to Britain after her murder. He said the Pakistani government is trying to bring them back for questioning.

Also on Saturday, defence lawyer Mohammed Arif dismissed the police allegations as baseless, saying his clients have been wrongly accused. He said he will appeal another court's recent rejection of bail for Mohammed Shahid.

Shahid's murder has shocked many Pakistanis since a government-ordered police probe concluded that she was strangled by her father and her ex-husband. Police allege that the father also stood guard while the ex-husband raped her.

The woman's father initially informed police that she died of natural causes. But Shahid's second husband, Mukhtar Kazim, publicly accused her family of killing her.

The case was reopened and a police probe quickly concluded that Shahid's death was a "premeditated, cold-blooded murder", according to a police statement.

Shahid married her 1st husband in February 2012 but stayed only briefly in Pakistan before returning to England where she obtained a divorce 2 years later. She later married Kazim and moved with him to Dubai.

Source: Associated Press, September 17, 2016

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Waves of executions are part of Indonesian President Joko Widodo's hard line on drug convicts. Australians best remember those of Bali Nine leaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, shot by firing squad in 2015 despite all efforts to save them. With more than 200 people on death row, why do anti-death penalty activists now see a ray of hope?
IN A SMALL Christian prayer room at Cilacap jail, on central Java’s south coast, a death-row prisoner talks diffidently about her wedding dress.
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Merri Utami had planned to wear her new white dress, not to second nuptials, but to her execution by firing squad last year.
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WEST PALM BEACH -- In a ruling that could prevent as many as 100 condemned inmates from seeking life sentences, the Florida Supreme Court this week rejected arguments that constitutional flaws with the state’s death penalty should benefit all 362 inmates on death row.
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The terrorist group known as ISIS has released pictures of a man being thrown off a roof in Syria.
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This execution is contrary to the international commitments that Iran itself has signed on to, particularly the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It is also a step backward with respect to the positive developments we have seen on human rights in Iran, most notably the Iranian Parliament’s adoption of a law on August 13 limiting the scope of the death penalty.
France reiterates its unwavering opposition to the death penalty throughout the world and in all circumstances.
It encourages Iran to continue its efforts and to establish a moratorium with a view to its abolition. Source: France Diplomatie, August 16, 2017

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The amendment will apply retroactively, thus commuting the sentences for many of the 5,300 inmates currently on death row for drug trafficking. Under the new bill, the punishment for those already convicted and given the death penalty or life in prison, other than those meeting the new execution requirements, will be commuted to up to 30 years in jail and a cash fine.
Iran’s parliament passed a long-awaited amendment to its drug trafficking laws on Sunday, raising the thresholds that can trigger capital punishment and potentially saving the lives of many on death row.
The bill must still be approved by the conservative-dominated Guardian Council but gained parliamentary approval after months of debate, according to parliament’s website and the ISNA news agency.
According to rights group Amnesty International, Iran was one of the top five executioners in the world in 2016, with most of its hangings related to illicit drugs. The watchdog noted sharp drops in the number of executions in …

I oppose the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally, regardless of the method chosen to kill the condemned prisoner.
The death penalty is inherently cruel and degrading, an archaic punishment that is incompatible with human dignity.
To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values.
The death penalty not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms.
The death penalty has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect.
It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way on grounds of race and class.
It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation.
It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim's family and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner.
It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it.
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